My YouTube Story

If you've never heard of Ashley Mardell, go ahead and check out the video above and get caught up, because Ashley is our web crush this week! With #WebCrushWednesday, we try to showcase people who are doing some truly unique things online. Ashley is about as unique as it gets, with her unique blend of an artistic hand as well as truly working to bring together the YouTube community.

STOP MOTION and Crayon Meltin'!

Since starting her channel, Ashley has time and time again wowed her audience with her editing skills. Sometimes Ashley would even claim to "over edit" her videos. Her more artistic videos truly show her video editing prowess and dedication to learning everything she can about producing online content.

Self Worth Cont. (ft Pano)

Another reason why we love Ashley is because, aside from videos with fancy edits, another mainstay of Ashley's content is geared towards aiding those who watch her videos to being more comfortable with themselves. Many times, Ashley has been likened Hannah Hart, whose channel Ashley has been featured on several times in both videos and live streams.

Big Vs. Little YouTube

If that weren't reason enough for Ashley to be our web crush this week, we truly think that Ashley's channel is the embodiment of the YouTube community. While Ashley's channel just surpassed 100,000 subscribers, Ashley actively collaborates with smaller content creators. Ashley even stays alert for new content creators to watch, and interacts with their channel via YouTube comments or Twitter, which leads her subscribers and followers to finding smaller content creators they wouldn't have otherwise found. Ashley is now taking this even a step further and is working on a project highlighting content creators with 20,000 subscribers or less.

We love that Ashley recognized a divide in the community, and decidedly to initiate a project that will hopefully bridge that gap. Ashley might be on her way into the pond of "big YouTube." but that doesn't mean that she won't build a bridge between levels of creators along the way.